Huawei MediaPad X1 is the lightest and narrowest 7inch phone tablet

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“Does the world need bigger smartphones? Huawei answers this question at MWC with the launch of its MediaPad X1, a 7-inch Android tablet that lets you make phone calls. As ridiculous as it sounds, this device is designed in a way that makes it more usable than other colossal phones. At just 239g heavy and 103.9mm wide, the X1 is the lightest and narrowest tablet in its class, beating the likes of the ASUS Fonepad 7, Kindle Fire HDX 7 and the latest Nexus 7. Don’t be deceived by the lightness, though; Huawei has managed to stuff a generous 5,000mAh battery — again beating the other 7-inch tablets — and a high-res 1,920 x 1,200 LTPS display inside this 7.18mm-thick aluminum body.
Let’s get the remaining specs out of the way. First and foremost, you get a pair of cameras: 13-megapixel f/2.4 on the back, and 5-megapixel f/2.2 on the front. There’s 16GB of internal storage, and you can add up to 32GB of external space via microSD. The SoC here is Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 910 (as seen on the Ascend P6S), which features a 1.6GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU, along with 2GB of RAM and a Mali-450 MP4 GPU. There’s support for both TD-LTE and FD-LTE, meaning you can enjoy 4G speeds in both China and a large part of the world. Likewise, the same phone also works on both WCDMA and China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA 3G networks. Sadly, the WiFi radio only goes up to 802.11n instead of the more powerful 802.11ac, but the 150Mbps LTE Cat 4 radio should somewhat make up for this — if your carrier supports it, that is. Read on for our hands-on video and thoughts. Huawei is pricing the X1 at a pretty competitive 399 euros.” Read more here:

Huawei brings LTE Cat 4 to affordable Ascend G6 smartphone

This year’s all about LTE Cat 4 for Huawei, which is why it’s pushing this faster 4G technology into both the high-end market as well as the lower price points, in order to help drive its network business — LTE Cat 4 only works if your carrier supports it, after all. At MWC, the company announced the launch of two affordable devices that will come with this 150Mbps technology: the Ascend G6 4G and the MediaPad M1. The Ascend G6 appears to share some design elements with the higher-end Ascend P6, so it looks quite pretty in the above render. It features a lesser 4.5-inch 960 x 540 LCD, a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, NFC and an adequate 2,000mAh battery. The cameras are surprising nice, though: there’s an 8-megapixel f/2.0 imager (with Sony’s IMX134 sensor) on the back, plus a 5-megapixel front-facing counterpart with unknown aperture. This phone will first arrive in its 3G-only, 7.5mm-thick form in Q1 this year, followed by a 7.85mm-thick 4G version in April. via engadget.com

Samsung Gear 2 smartwatches coming in April with Tizen OS and better battery life

Even in an industry known for evolving at an impossibly quick pace, it’s rare for a product to be replaced in just five months. If you’ve read our review of Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch, however, it probably makes sense why the manufacturer would want to antiquate it as soon as possible — while an interesting concept, the wearable was clearly half-baked. This morning, Samsung is starting off Mobile World Congress by announcing the Gear 2 (shown above, right) and the camera-less Gear 2 Neo (above, left), both of which (the company hopes) will address most of its predecessor’s pain points when it arrives in stores worldwide this April. Read more here: